English: Education is often portrayed as a silver bullet to solve society’s and the planet’s most pressing problems. If everyone is only ‘well educated’ enough, we can defeat poverty, hunger and inequality, it is said. If we all go to school and college, listen attentively to what the teachers tell us, memorise the knowledge imparted by textbooks, and behave as ‘good students’ would do, our future will look bright. This mantra is frequently recited and reinforced by parents, politicians, business(wo)men, the media, and of course by school administrators and teachers themselves. The equation of obtaining a school or college degree with a more or less worriless life has become so deeply ingrained in us as a common-sense assumption and truism that the verisimilitude of this very equation is rarely if ever being questioned. However, social sciences research from both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries shows that over the last decades, mainstream education rarely has functioned as ‘the great equaliser’. More often than not, it serves to cement and perpetuate existing inequalities in society – this holds true for countries such as India, Germany, the United States, and many others across the world where educational opportunities are directly linked to one’s socio-economic background.